Fate played a colossal joke on Lisa Camian and Michelle Eden. They were born in the best of times, enjoying excellent education and life, yet at the prime age of fifteen, they reached the end of their lives. The hovercars of the two families crashed just before reaching the finish line of happiness, and everyone on board died. Judging from the tears on the external engine, the hovercars must have been shot down by the corrupt Fly Riders. It is certain that Nagoth’s legion invaded the North American region. Facing Nagoth, resistance from mortals is despairing, with omnipresent decay and plague serving as the final straw that crushed this land. It’s said that in Washington D.C., a limited rapid response force in North America had built a line of defense, but according to the diaries, they failed so quickly that it left children and intelligence officers puzzled. Of course, Tappahannock is still some distance from Washington, and neither the children nor the intelligence officers have firsthand information. Malin had to wait until he reached Washington to seek new intelligence. Returning to the rooftop for rest, Malin read through several more diaries. Most of these diaries mentioned American Independence Day—that is to say, Tappahannock had received the city’s evacuation order as early as the evening of July 4th. But there was still one diary whose owner lived in this empty city for three years—this was found by Maya, who thought Malin would enjoy reading this diary. This made Malin feel like he had found a treasure. The diary’s owner, named Gaia Hamilton, was different from the previous middle-class families. He was just an ordinary poor person from the slums. Unlike the wealthy who escaped by car and the moneyless who fled on foot, he chose to hide in this city. Of course, besides Hamilton, a few other impoverished or sentimentally tied individuals lived in this deserted city. Like Hamilton, he lived in a small high-rise apartment by the intercity highway, leading a life that compared to before was like that of an emperor. To put it in simpler terms, his life could be summed up with two words: looting and squatting. And his cash-strapped friends even took to the highway to smash car windows and pry open car rear doors—inside those windows appeared to be quite a few valuables left behind by wealthy individuals fleeing, and who knows what good things might be in the rear doors. Speaking of which, Hamilton once pulled out a little girl’s corpse and a sacrificial list from the trunk of a limousine supposedly belonging to the governor of Maine. Damn governors always played on such a grand scale. Mr. Hamilton cursed his bad luck at first but had no choice but to find a spot beneath the highway embankment to bury the girl—this was a decent deed, Hamilton felt he did a good deed. Although the girl hadn’t been dead long, clearly letting her rest forever in the trunk wasn’t a solution. But the next day, upon waking, Hamilton saw the grave had been opened. Initially, he thought it was the work of lunatics left in the city, but when he saw that girl staggering southward in traffic, he felt a wave of collapse. But that wasn’t the main event. The real highlight was on July 11th, when Mr. Hamilton saw Nagoth’s vanguard—the monsters with exposed rotting bellies dragging their intestines as they walked across the highway. From the rooftop hiding, Gaia Hamilton felt that what he learned in public school was overturned. My teacher never told me that a creature could have a forty-by-thirty hole in its belly, drag its intestines onto its feet, yet still chase after survivors. But on that day, he saw those monsters chasing and killing his friends who were happily smashing windows and prying doors, cutting off their heads and hanging them on their waists. And from that day on, Hamilton had to tuck his tail and live cautiously. The highway of this city welcomed wave after wave of human tides... Yes, human tides. Malin looked at the seas of people captured by this young man who had nothing but was not in distress in the diary. They were a diverse range of the dead, fashionably dressed citizens, soldiers in uniforms, the elderly, children—these dead... no, they shouldn’t be called the dead, because at the root, their souls were trapped in their increasingly decaying shells; this is what Nagoth called eternal. These Nagoth’s living zombies held all kinds of weapons, from chair legs to planks, of course, including farm implements and other things. In the final photograph, Hamilton specifically took a close-up shot of an elderly man in a suit—a living zombie—holding a large microphone, carried by a group of Nagoth souls onto a wooden tabletop. He sat there, looking unusually authoritative. The photo bore an interesting caption—our 76th President of the United States. The diary also mentioned, it seems our unfortunate president cannot escape death, but at least now he appears more agile than when he was alive. The White House desk seems even larger than what I saw on TV. Malin chuckled—Mr. Hamilton did not understand; he thought his president was merely dead. But from Malin’s perspective, this was Nagoth’s souls carrying Nagoth’s palanquin. This president’s dream of eternity seemed realized. Now, this president has become a fresh and rash Nagoth pioneer.